2023 Review - North East

[East Anglian Lefty]

Jan 10, 2021 10:54:01 GMT islington said:

Jan 9, 2021 21:17:38 GMT jamie said:

islington I like some of what you’ve done but I can’t help but nitpick a few issues. There’s quite a few small communities split eg; Seaton Delaval, Fenham and Gosforth, Gateshead West is Blaydon, half of South Shields is in Sunderland North so needs a rename, and the inclusion of Bedlington in Hexham has triggered me (its very isolated from the rest of the constituency and very much looks to other Northumberland coastal communities/Newcastle itself.

Well, Jamie, I try not to get too much hung up on the question of names so if you prefer 'Blaydon' and 'Gateshead', that's fine.

Regarding Newcastle, I kept together all the wards with 'Gosforth' in the name - which is more than the current map achieves - but I freely admit that this is not a city I know well so I quite accept that better arrangements may be possible. I'd point out, though, that, unlike some plans upthread, I have only one seat crossing the city boundary.

Regarding Bedlington: the current Hexham seat is well short on numbers so it needs to expand somewhere. Assuming you respect the existing boundaries with Berwick to the north and Durham UA to the south, your choices are to break the boundary with either Newcastle or Gateshead, to add half of Cramlington, or to add Bedlington. I accept the last of these may not be a great fit but the alternatives aren't good either.

If you're looking at where the transport connections go, the outskirts of Newcastle are a much better fit for the Tyne Valley than either Cramlington or Bedlington.

[Deleted]

Jan 7, 2021 22:23:54 GMT @europeanlefty said:

I've managed what I think is a reasonable plan with only 5 constituencies split across council areas. The idea was that creating mostly sensible seats would make up for the odd inevitable horror show


Newcastle, N Tyneside and Northumberland
1. Berwick, Hexham & the Border - all of Berwick minus Shillbottle, both Amble wards, Druridge Bay, Pegswood, Lynemouth and Longhorsley; all of Hexham minus Ponteland wards, Prudhoe wards and Bywell. Electorate 71999, notionally safe Conservative
2. Newcastle, Jesmond - Newcastle East realigned with ward boundaries, plus Monument & Arthur's Hill. Electorate 77,038, notionally safe Labour
3. Ashington & Morpeth - All of Wansbeck except the Bedlington wards, plus those wards removed from Berwick. Electorate 75,418, notionally marginal Conservative
4. Wallsend & Tynemouth - the N Tyneside wards of Wallsend, Riverside, Howdon, Chirton, Preston, Tynemouth, Northumberland, Cullercoats, Battle Hill and Collingwood. Electorate 76,894, notionally safe Labour
5. Whitley Bay - the rest of N Tyneside minus Weetslade. Electorate 71,452, notionally safe Labour
6. Newcastle Gosforth - Newcastle Central minus the two wards removed to Jesmond, plus Parklands and Lemington, and realigned with ward boundaries. Electorate 74,368, notionally safe Labour
7. Newcastle, Kingston Park & Ponteland - one of the horror show ones. The rest of Newcastle West, plus Weetslade (N Tyneside), and those wards removed from Hexham. Electorate 74,124, notionally I would think marginal Labour
8. Blyth & Bedlington - all of Blyth Valley plus the Bedlington wards. Electorate 75,485, notionally marginal Lab

Gateshead
1. Gateshead - the current Gateshead minus Dunston & Teams, plus Pelaw & Heworth and Wardley & Leam Lane. Electorate 70,553, notionally safe Labour
2. Blaydon - the current Blaydon plus Dunston & Teams. Electorate 74,066, notionally safe Labour

Sunderland, S Tyneside & Durham
1. Sunderland Central - The current seat minus St Anne's, Pallion, and wards north of the Wear, plus Sandhill, St Chands, Silksworth, Doxford. Electorate 71,317, notionally marginal Labour
2. Newton Aycliffe & Bishop Auckland - what it says plus Ferryhill & Chilton wards. Electorate 72,042, notionally I would guess marginal Conservative?
3. Boldon & Roker - Fulwell, St Peter's, Redhill from Sunderland, Boldon wards plus Fellgate, Whitburn, Whitleas, Cleadon Park and Harton from S Tyneside. Electorate 69,751, notionally reasonably safe Labour
4. Washington & Sunderland Castle - the current W&SW, minus Redhill, plus Southwick and Pallion. Electorate 73,864, notionally marginal Labour
5. Jarrow & South Shields - rest of S Tyneside. Electorate 70,647, notionally safe Labour
6. Houghton & Seaham - the rest of H&SS plus most of Shotton (c. 4500 voters), Seaham, Murton, Deneside, Dawdon, Easington. Electorate 70,607, notionally reasonably safe Labour
7. Consett & Stanley - N Durham except ClS, Sacriston, Lumley, plus Consett. Electorate 70,085, notionally marginal Labour ?
8. Durham West - the rest of NW Durham plus Evenwood, Barnard Castle, Brandon, and realigment with ward boundaries. Electorate 75,867, notionally safe Conservative
9. Sedgefield & Peterlee - Remiander of Sedgefield and Easington plus Tudhoe, Coxhoe, Durham South. Electorate 70,134, notionally marginal Conservative
10. City of Durham & Chester-le-Street
- Remainder of City, plus ClS, Sacriston, Lumley. Electorate 72,579, notionally marginal Labour?

Hartlepool
1. Hartlepool - unchanged. Electorate 71,228, notionally marginal Labour

Darlington, Stockton, Borough, R&C
1. Middlesbrough - the current seat realigned to ward boundaries, plus Marton East. Electorate 69,938, notionally safe Labour
2. Stockton South - as current, minus Mandale, Village, Stainsby Hill, plus Sadberge & Middleton St George, Hurworth. Electorate 70,854, notionally marginal Conservative
3. Redcar - as the current seat, minus part of Ormesby (c. 14-1500 voters), plus Saltburn. Electorate 69,864, notionally marginal Conservative
4. Darlington - Darlington borough minus the two wards removed to Stockton S. Electorate 70,446, notionally marginal Conservative
5. Stockton North - the current seat plus Mandale & Victoria. Electorate 71,093, notionally marginal Labour
6. Middlesbrough South & Guisborough - as the current MSEC, minus the areas removed to Redcar or Borough, plus Stainsby Hill and Village. Electorate 71,178, notionally safe Conservative

Total Con 9 (-1) Lab 18 (-1)

Just thought I'd add my effort in picture form now that I've been shown how to

[YL]

Here is an attempt at the North East. I haven't looked in detail at other plans, though I have skim read the comments in this thread.



Redcar 71,331. Gains Saltburn.
Middlesbrough South & Guisborough 73,183. Loses Saltburn, gains some more bits of Middlesbrough.
Middlesbrough North & Thornaby 73,641.
Stockton West & Sedgefield 69,729. Yarm and Ingleby Barwick; the western edge of Stockton proper, a couple of Darlington wards, and Sedgefield. Not my favourite seat in the plan...
Stockton & Billingham 71,413. The rest of Stockton borough...
Darlington 70,446. ... and the rest of Darlington.
Hartlepool 71,228.

Easington 74,282. Loses Seaham and extends a bit inland to compensate.
City of Durham & Chester-le-Street 75,696. Who drew the wards in this area?
Consett 70,085. North Durham, but with Consett rather than Chester-le-Street.
Weardale 75,040. North West Durham without Consett, and an awkward tail southeastwards.
Bishop Auckland 75,162. Fairly recognisable, but takes in Newton Aycliffe rather than Spennymoor. I have another version with a compact Bishop Auckland seat and a Weardale & Teesdale.

Sunderland South & Seaham 70,036. Crossing the border between Sunderland and the Durham unitary.
Sunderland Central 71,736. Little change, but you'll notice one ward has gone missing.
Sunderland West & Washington 74,129. Again little change.
South Shields 71,783. That lost Sunderland ward allows this to remain otherwise unchanged, but I'm not going to try very hard to defend it.
Jarrow & Gateshead East 72,382. Fairly self-explanatory.
Gateshead 70,360. Loses one ward to Jarrow, and gains a couple from Blaydon.
Blaydon & Prudhoe 70,292. Crossing the Gateshead/Northumberland boundary.

Berwick-upon-Tweed & Hexham 72,541. Yes, this is enormous and poorly connected, but it means it doesn't need to grab a small area from the conurbation. I did do another version without it.
Wansbeck 70,983. Extends to Amble.
Blyth Valley 75,485. Gains Bedlington.

Newcastle North & Ponteland 70,419. Again, fairly self-explanatory.
Tynemouth 75,717. One ward in, one out.
Longbenton 73,256. The other North Tyneside seat. I'm not calling it "North Tyneside" when it doesn't touch the Tyne.
Newcastle East & Wallsend 72,892. Just Wallsend ward added to the existing seat.
Newcastle Central 69,752. Really just realigned to the new wards.

A bit more border crossing than I'd really like, and a few other things could be improved...

[minionofmidas]

Longbenton and Tynemouth are entirely in N Tyneside?

[YL]

Jan 12, 2021 19:55:34 GMT minionofmidas said:

Longbenton and Tynemouth are entirely in N Tyneside?

Yes.

[La Fontaine]

I think that generally there is a trade off between keeping communities together and not crossing council boundaries. The more you prioritise one, the less you prioritise the other. Also, Tees Valley is now an up-and-running regional body. Will its boundaries play any part? For example, it is possible to create a fairly sensible constituency based upon Newton Aycliffe and Barnard Castle. This might include two Darlington rural wards. But the Stockton-Durham boundary would still need to be crossed. So the Tees Valley boundary would be crossed twice. Not sensible, perhaps.

And then what should we expect of the regional commissioners? Last time their initial proposals were something of a joke and sank almost without trace. They seemed to have been appointed purely upon the basis of legal qualifications. I had never heard of any of them. This time I wonder whether, for instance, any of them will know that there is a community called Thornaby, as it doesn't appear in any ward name.

Last time the final proposals were generally quite sensible. The exception was the strange decision to prioritise not crossing the Northumberland boundary. This led to the attachment of Burnopfield & Dipton to Blaydon as an orphan ward from County Durham. Very odd!

[johnloony]

I notice that the Boundary Assistant map shows a very thin strip of land in Peterlee East ward in Durham in between the two neighbouring wards.

boundaryassistant.org/PlanBuilder/index.html?v=1.52



Is that correct, or was there an error in drawing the lines on the map? I wanted to double-check on the election maps website

www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/election-maps/gb/

but I can't select the ward boundaries for unitary authorities because there is a stupid thingy which gets in the way in the bottom left-hand corner. How can I get to it? Is there a trick?

[La Fontaine]

It's also a parish boundary and seems to be the line of a dene running down to the sea. I suspect it stretches back to the parishes that existed way back and were codified when civil parishes were established in the nineteenth century. I don't know what preceded Peterlee New Town, but I conjecture that one of the preceding parishes owned it.

There are some really daft parish boundaries. In Gateshead Lamesley Parish boundary meanders across Birtley, Eighton Banks and the Harlow Green and Team Valley estates. I made a half-hearted attempt to get it rationalised, but there was zero interest, including by the parish council.

Update: it's part of Castle Eden Dene.

[Pete Whitehead]

I've revisited this region with a fresh eye - this being the English region I undoubtedly know the least well I haven't paid it a lot of attention and I didn't check my earlier effort (nor others) before completing this. I think the basics of my plan are similar but the detail is improved and this seems quite a good minimum change effort, at least in the South of the region






I've noted comments above about splitting Thornaby. That seems to be the main defect here but agree with others that the alternatives are worse

[🏴‍☠️ Neath West 🏴‍☠️]

Because Castle Ward would be a brilliant name for a constituency (and I'm obviously all for dismembering Wansbeck):

1 Newcastle East 77038 Yes
2 Newcastle West 74386 Yes
3 North Tyneside 72719 Yes
4 Tynemouth 75717 Yes
5 Blyth 75937 Yes
6 Castle Ward 72163 Yes
7 Berwick 72917 Yes
8 Hexham 76009 Yes

[Arthur Figgis]

Feb 3, 2021 22:50:18 GMT 🏴‍☠️ Neath West 🏴‍☠️ said:

Because Castle Ward would be a brilliant name for a constituency (and I'm obviously all for dismembering Wansbeck):

1 Newcastle East 77038 Yes
2 Newcastle West 74386 Yes
3 North Tyneside 72719 Yes
4 Tynemouth 75717 Yes
5 Blyth 75937 Yes
6 Castle Ward 72163 Yes
7 Berwick 72917 Yes
8 Hexham 76009 Yes

Castle Ward and Newcastle could also be a good constituency name for South Down. Especially as a progeny of Kilkeel, I find it hard to accept any territory north of the Mournes being considered 'South' Down.

[Pete Whitehead]

Feb 3, 2021 22:27:48 GMT Pete Whitehead said:

I've revisited this region with a fresh eye - this being the English region I undoubtedly know the least well I haven't paid it a lot of attention and I didn't check my earlier effort (nor others) before completing this. I think the basics of my plan are similar but the detail is improved and this seems quite a good minimum change effort, at least in the South of the region






I've noted comments above about splitting Thornaby. That seems to be the main defect here but agree with others that the alternatives are worse

Slight amendment to this map in Teeside:
Saltburn goes into Redcar and Park End & Beckfield into MS & CE (thus keeping Redcar entirely within the one UA)
Ladgate goes from Middlesbrough to MS & CE and Trimdon the other way
Stainsby Hill from Stockton South to Middlsbrough and Village the other way

[Andrew_S]

Considering whether to try putting Stockton into one seat instead of splitting it north/south plus other areas.

[John Chanin]

As I suspected this is far from easy.  Firstly I managed to get the Cleveland unitaries plus Darlington into 7 seats on their own without crossing the Durham border, despite all of them needing to be small.  This isn't very different from now - 2 Stockton wards go into Middlesbrough (Thornaby), and the Darlington wards currently in Sedgefield replace them.  A bit of fiddling round with boundary between North and South is needed. 

In Northumberland I have Berwick & Morpeth, Ashington & Blyth, and Cramlington (including Bedlington and Prudhoe).  Tyne & Wear causes more problems.  I have extracted the two Seaton Delaval wards and added them to "Tynemouth" (better called Whitley Bay).  Preston & Chirton move to North Tyneside. 3 wards drop into Newcastle, which enables me to have 3 Newcastle seats without any nasty river crossing.   

South of the Tyne my initial and obvious thought was to simply have 2 seats in Gateshead.  But this requires an awkward Jarrow & Washington seat which doesn't include the whole of Washington, and makes you lose 3 Sunderland wards into Durham.  After playing with this I decided it was better to take a different tack.  So I retained 3 Sunderland seats by adding Seaham to South as in the zombie review.  South Shields expands west to include the whole town.  You then have a Jarrow & Gateshead East seat (for which there is much precedent), and a Gateshead West seat.  The 6 western wards (Blaydon) join with the Stanley area in Durham.  Consett to the west joins with Hexham.  Chester-le-Street to the east forms a seat with Durham City. 

The rest of Durham gives you options.  I have extended Easington to include Sedgefield and Sherburn in exchange for Seaham.  The successor to Sedgefield is Spennymoor & Aycliffe, taking 4 wards from the existing Bishop Auckland seat.  The latter extends north to pick up the rest of the current NW Durham seat (basically the upper Wear Valley).  

I am quite pleased with this, and will now look with interest at how others have done this region. 

[islington]

Inspired by John Chanin 's idea for respecting the boundary between Durham UA and the Teesside UAs, here's a way of doing it that still allows you to give two whole seats to Gateshead.

South Shields and Jarrow - 70874. Some southern wards trimmed from S Shields.

Washington - 73766. I'm pretty happy with this one despite the orphan ward.

Sunderland North and Boldon - 71688.

Sunderland South - 71092.

Easington and Houghton - 71167.

Chester-le-Street - 73327. Actually the current N Durham seat with one ward added.

Consett - 70300.

Durham - 72907.

Sedgefield - 70039. Now wholly within Durham UA and extended to the coast to include Peterlee.

Bishop Auckland - 71733.

Hartlepool - 71228. Unchanged as everyone has it.

Darlington - 69893.

Stockton North - 70189. This is where it all gets a bit ugly, but this was the only configuration I could find that didn't cross into Durham UA or make a complete mess elsewhere. I'm 100% open to being told that there's a superior arrangement that I missed.

Stockton South - 69907. The boundary within the town of Stockton actually extends rather a long way north, and the inclusion of Stainsby Hill isn't great news either. Even so it's less ugly than the previous seat.

Middlesbrough West and Thornaby - 72339. I'm sure there's a minimum change way of doing Middlesbrough and Redcar & Cleveland UAs but I've never liked the current seats, especially MS&CE, so I've gone for a complete overhaul to see how it looks.

Middlesbrough East - 69977.

Redcar - 71068. You might want to add Cleveland to the name.

[mattb]

Or see my plan on p1

[islington]

Feb 6, 2021 20:33:22 GMT mattb said:

Or see my plan on p1

Thanks. I'd missed that.

However, you've separated Thornaby Village from Mandale & Victoria, which I wanted to avoid. (Splitting off Stainsby Hill seems unavoidable if Teesside is being treated separately.)

But if, compared with my previous map, Stockton N picks up Parkfield and Hardwick wards, and loses Western Parishes and its Darlington elements, everything - incredibly - just about works. As a bonus, this even allows you to swap Heighington into Darlington in place of Hurworth, which makes a lot more sense on the ground.

Darlington - 70446.

Stockton West (as it would become in this arrangement) - 69764.

Stockton East - 69779.

Remarkably the Stockton seats exceed the minimum by 40 and 55 respectively.

Edited to add: And sorry, I forgot to say that I prefer your plan for an east-west split of Middlesbrough. Compared with mine, it swaps Central and Ladgate wards, giving East 71880, West & Thornaby 70436.

[Pete Whitehead]

Feb 6, 2021 20:33:22 GMT mattb said:

Or see my plan on p1

Or mine on this page

[Pete Whitehead]

Feb 6, 2021 21:46:09 GMT Pete Whitehead said:

Feb 6, 2021 20:33:22 GMT mattb said:

Or see my plan on p1

Or mine on this page

Or my other plan on page 1...

[islington]

Sorry, Pete, you're right. You had the exact same super-small Stocktons too.